Prefrontal Cortex And Posterior Parietal Cortex Neurons Discharge Characteristics In Recognition Memory

Recognition memory is widely viewed as consisting of two independent processes: recollection and familiarity, which depend on separate, but interlinked, structures. This study takes vivo multi-channel neuronal recording technique to record the neuronal activities and local field potentials (LFPs) in prelimbic cortex area and posterior parietal cortex when rats were performing recognition memory tasks, analysing the coherence between prelimbic cortex neuron and posterior parietal cortex neuron under the recognition memory tasks, therefore examing the specific roles of those two brain areas in the dual-process theory. This study indicates three principal results, firstly, rats spent more time to explore novel objects during the novel object recognition task, and we record three type of cells in prelimbic cortex area and posterior parietal cortex, that is neurons exhibited selective increases in their firing rates at novel objects, neurons exhibited selective increases in their firing rates at familiar objects, neurons exhibited increases in their firing rates at both novel and familiar objects and neurons exhibited no or decreases in their firing rates at objects. Those results indicates that prelimbic cortex and posterior parietal cortex may play roles in the two processes of the recognition memory. Secondly, rats spent the most time to explore the previous occurrence and location changed objects, in addition, prelimbic cortex fire more at previous occurrence objects, while posterior parietal cortex fire more at location changed objects, those results indicates that the two brains areas of their specific roles in recollection process are different, the former works on the "when" component, while the latter works on the "what" component. In addition, the two brain areas perform some relevance in the tasks, however, the relation between them is not direct.